By Michael Coughlin Jr.
PLAN: East Boston, the neighborhood planning initiative spearheaded by the Boston Planning and Development Agency (BPDA), which contains recommendations that revamp the neighborhood, was adopted by the BPDA’s Board during a meeting last week.
The initiative, which began in 2018, has been through an abundance of community engagement, especially over the previous year through public meetings, office hours, and much more, to develop the final plan that went before the Board last week titled East Boston Tomorrow.
“The term community engagement does not accurately justify the efforts that took place, and it’s hard to demonstrate the impact it had on the plan,” said Jason Ruggiero, a Community Engagement Manager at the BPDA.
“We didn’t just engage, and we didn’t just perform our outreach. We actively involved
stakeholders in every step of the process,” he added during last week’s Board meeting.
The final plan has many recommendations for different aspects of the neighborhood, broken down by character areas — neighborhood residential areas, squares and corridors, and waterfront and evolving industrial areas.
The character areas are then broken down further into 17 different “geographical subareas,” according to Kristina Ricco, a Senior Planner at the BPDA.
As for what the recommendations focus on, the aspects include the neighborhood’s public realm, including transportation, as well as land use and built form (zoning).
The plan also contains policy and program considerations that “reach further than the limits of these tools and even the geographic limit of the neighborhood,” according to Ricco.
Nick Schmidt, a Senior Transportation Planner at the BPDA, walked through some of the public realm and transportation recommendations for the neighborhood.
Schmidt described these recommendations in the plan as a translation of Go Boston 2030 — a city transportation plan introduced under former Mayor Martin Walsh in 2017 — at a neighborhood scale.
Furthermore, these recommendations are made for each of the mentioned character areas. For example, Schmidt spoke about how public realm and transportation recommendations in neighborhood residential areas focus on features such as traffic calming and increasing greenery.
It is important to note that the plan’s final version has dropped specific recommendations for Border Street, Meridian Street, and Bennington Street north of Day Square due to concerns from the community.
However, Schmidt said the plan “Continues to identify those streets and their challenges and recommends more detailed planning and design to follow.”
Schmidt also highlighted concrete examples of recommendations for Day Square, which would add public space and a new MBTA station to the area, and outlined the partnerships and grants being pursued to make the recommendations a reality.
Finally, he spoke about implementation and explained that the plan contains “implementation spotlights” that “communicate what’s next for recommendations that have anticipated timelines and identified funding partners already.”
Following Schmidt’s remarks, Cyrus Miceli, a Zoning Reform Planning Assistant at the BPDA, walked through the recommendations for land use and built form, which will be implemented through changes to the neighborhood’s zoning article — Article 53.
Specifically, use tables are proposed to be simplified from over 200 unique uses to 119. Further, changes are planned for residential, mixed-use, and waterfront zoning.
For example, residential zoning subdistricts are slated to be consolidated from 10 to 3. These new subdistricts are EBR (East Boston Residential)- 2.5, 3, and 4, with the number corresponding to the maximum number of stories a building is allowed.
In addition to consolidating the subdistricts, the dimensional requirements have been simplified.
Finally, there are also changes slated for economic development areas (EDAs), which include relaxed land uses, and the neighborhood’s corridor enhancement subdistrict is being retired to introduce two new EDAs and a new open space subdistrict.
Other significant slated changes include removing parking minimums in mixed-use subdistricts near “transit hubs” and having other parking minimums align with the maximum parking ratios from the Boston Transportation Department (BTD).
After Ruggiero wrapped up the presentation to the BPDA Board with an outline of the aforementioned policy considerations and community engagement, it was time for questions and comments from the Board.
Priscilla Rojas, the Board’s Chair, asked members of the plan’s project team what it felt like concerning changes to the planning process.
Following Rojas’ initial question and the response from the project team, City Councilor Gabriela Coletta provided testimony concerning the plan.
Specifically, Coletta walked through some of the changes made to the plan through community advocacy, such as zoning in residential areas being more consistent with the context of the neighborhood and much more.
“We fought extremely hard for East Boston and ultimately moved many aspects of the plan to an iteration that is truly reflective of what residents wanted,” said Coletta.
Coletta also expressed the desire for the BPDA to begin work on a promised Neighborhood Needs Analysis and for the Zoning Board of Appeal (ZBA) to adhere to the zoning changes made in the plan.
“It would be devastating for the ZBA to unravel five years of deep partnership and ultimately wasting valuable city resources by granting variances to the new rules that we created together,” said Coletta.
Following Coletta’s testimony, Rojas made some comments in part, saying, “I’m so proud, and congratulations to everyone who worked on this, to everyone who will benefit from this.”
After the comments from Rojas, the Board unanimously adopted PLAN: East Boston and unanimously voted to petition the Zoning Commission to implement the plan’s zoning recommendations.